Singapore – Kallang

Pretty new cafe which is located at the Lavender Street, occupying the corner shoplot, fully white based design with a large bar table at one side, a few small tables somewhere along the large windows. The Apartment Coffee‘s environment in the cafe is quite quiet, simple yet elegant. They do play some background music and noise level is quite minimal, making it a good place to spend the day having a cup of coffee or tea alone or with one or two friends.

It is not recommended to go with large group of friends as the seats are limited. You can google the place and check out the interior design of the cafe as I did not take any pictures in the cafe except for my cup of coffee.

Coffee with milk from Colombia El Mirador coffee beans.

Their menu is quite simple, minimal selection so I did not ask for any recommendations from the counter and I chose to try Colombia El Mirador coffee with milk. The fragrant comes from the coffee beans during the preparation of my cup of latte truly made my brain more alert. I guess it should be the berries smell which tastes fruity sweet.

The coffee serves in the ceramic made tea-cup sized, a pretty different presentation and it has only one single size for hot drink. My first impression upon seeing the cup of coffee was “woah, small cup does it mean it is very gao (strong)?”

Perhaps, some of us, especially those who do not go to cafe often, may find a cup of coffee costs more than a bowl of noodle or a plate of rice, is expensive, and always can get a cheaper one costs us a dollar and still can ask for kopi gao (strong coffee), why want to spend so much. Haha.

There is one thing I learned about coffee, it is not about the price that makes a coffee different. It is the process of roasting coffee beans to the preparation of a cup of coffee, how much water to put in, how much beans to use, how long to brew it are different per different batches of seasonal coffee beans.

Any comments?

I noticed a few food bloggers in Singapore have written reviews about this cafe. It is glad to find out the owner of this cafe is a former Singapore Brewer Champion who is also one of the baristas working there. Also, I noticed they love to talk with the customers, perhaps, is their friends too.

Again! After the Christmas’ visit, I went back to Two Bakers, an artisan patisserie shop at Horne Road, Singapore. It is an impromptu visit to have a share of cakes with a colleague after lunch. It was just a distant walk from the food court to cafe.

Litchi Rose

Litchi in French means lychee in English.

It is made of raspberry favoured light sponge cake, with rose infused buttercream, litchi bits and rose petals and carefully designed with a small stalk of rosemary on top of the cake.

See the picture, it looks so pretty. At the first glance, it gives me an impression that the sponge cake is quite dry. It may look better and give better texture if the cake is slightly moist. Overall, the cake is not sweet, not overwhelmed with rose and not creamy, it is quite suitable for my liking.

Two bakers always give me a surprised combination of natural ingredients to make their delicious cakes. I hope to try their main course one day.

Tim Ho Wan, Aperia Mall, Kallang, Singapore.
Hong Kong Most Famous Dim Sum.
A lunch outing with colleagues to the Michelin dim sum restaurant which is located quite closed to our office. I am a fan of dim sum and like to spend time eating dim sum and drinking the Chinese tea to spend time.

Of course, during office our we cannot afford to spend so much time for lunch and everything has to be quick within the hour. We ordered a few nice dim sum for our shares. It included the baked buns with BBQ pork, vermicelli roll with BBQ pork, congee with century egg, salted egg and pork, glutinous rice with lotus leaf and steamed egg cake.

The baked buns with BBQ pork is a must to try among others. The buns are crispy from the outside and chewy from the inside. The gravy from the BBQ pork is heavenly nice. Next, you should try their vermicelli roll with BBQ pork. I guess they use the same BBQ pork as the baked bun, that makes it so nice to eat.

If you like to eat glutinous rice, you can order it and it tasted nice too with generous ingredients such as chicken meat, mushroom and some inner stuff. Otherwise, their siew mai (pork dumpling with prawn) and har gao (prawn dumpling) are good as well.

It is my first time trying the steamed egg cake and it is so spongy and light. It is also my first time trying the congee, which turns out to be a simple congee. You can skip it altogether for other dim sum.

I joined a group of colleagues for a so-called farewell lunch together at this famous dim sum house located at Aperia Mall. We bumped into another group of colleagues and we sat at the same corner to enjoy the meals together. It was my first time visit and we did try a lot of their dim sum. Their menu is pretty simple, just around 20 different dim sum.

Here is all of our orders for the day, quite many of them to name it, so I just leave it without naming them. It is shared by three persons including myself.
Overall, their dim sum is rather expensive if I were to compare with those that I can get from other normal dim sum shops. However, for the price of a Michelin’s restaurant, some of the dim sum are really worth to try for the second time especially the baked bun with BBQ pork because of the texture of the baked bun and the gravy of the BBQ pork make it so special.

There are many others we did not get to order and it looks good too, so I hope during my second visit next time, I can try other dim sum too.

My colleague found this Halal restaurant which serves crab. She wanted to eat crab and wanted to bring our Malay colleague along to try it. We went to this restaurant for three times on separated occasions. She suggested to try the crab beehoon after another of our colleague mentioned about this delicacies. And so far, we have yet eaten with the colleague who mentioned about it.
The crab beehoon is great especially when the beehoon soaked with all the gravy in the claypot. It is best to leave it for a while before eating it. Then, the beehoon will taste better and will not feel hot holding the crab. The size of the crab is reasonable big for 3 persons. 😀

We ordered other dishes as well and the food cooked in Chinese style. The taste of each dishes are delicious and I can feel the home-cooked aroma too. Our table was full of food when it was served.
We ordered the tofu cooked in hotplate, vegetable with meats, salted egg squids and seaweed soup.
On another occasion, we tried their fried noodle and although it is sinful to order this fried beef kway teow, it is really aromatic when it was served.
During our first visit, we saw few tables are Malays and they seem liking the food here too. It is worthy to give a try to eat here whenever you want to bring your Malay friends to try Chinese food.

Maybe some of the Malaysians will find this is insane. The Nasi lemak with sambal sotong with add-on Iced Lemon Tea after tax it costed SGD$10.23. It is about MYR30.00.

For the same price, many Malaysians can get 10 packs of nasi lemak with sambal sotong from normal road side traders. These nasi lemak could be nicer than Old Town’s one. Even, those little stalls selling nearby the MRT stations can do it better than this. Probably this is first and last Old Town White Coffee’s meal in Singapore.
Looking at this plate of luxury Nasi Lemak, it is really tasted normal, not having strong santan taste on their rice and their sambal looks either oily or watery to me. It needs a lot of improvement for the price that they charged.

First time to explore this new shopping centre called, Aperia Mall which also has office tower that houses some big companies such as Intel, McDonald’s (according to a website’s information, https://ordinarypatrons.com/2014/10/01/aperia-mall/). This shopping centre is not crowded with people at the moment and there are plenty restaurants around.

The first restaurant I tried is called Cucina, an Italian restaurant which is located at the 2nd floor of the shopping centre. During our visit, they were doing the 1-for-1 promotion and five of us tried their promotion offers and ordered other side dishes too.
Their dishes do not come with drinks and we have to order our own drinks, and even if you choose to have plain water, they do charge for plain water.

Duck Confit – gently sumptuous duck leg with berries sauce infused. Among all the dishes that we ordered, this is the nicest. The duck meat and the sauce go well together with the rest of the side vegetables.Grilled Salmon fillet with special cocktail sauce. It is another nice main dish which we ordered, however, the fillet is quite small. It would be better if they gave us a bigger piece, judging by the price they charged us.Grilled Ribeye with red wine sauce, tastes normal when I compared it with the above two other dishes.Pizza al fruitti di mare – mussels, prawns, squids and tomatoes. The pizza is very cheesy and the ingredients are not many. I am not sure if my portion of pizza do not have all the ingredients on top of it.Parma ham rolled is the starter which we ordered. I was told that it is a must to try when visiting an Italian restaurant.
Overall, the food here is still okay and acceptable for a try.